Once Upon a time: Cooking … Baking … Traveling … Laughing …

Monthly Archives: April 2018

Here’s the thing people: Some things you can hurry. Two things you hurry at your peril: small children and natural sourdough breads … I rapidly learned long ago when I had my own young toddlers, hurry is not in their repertoir. Just doesn’t happen. The glory of being a Grandparent is we generally move at toddler speed naturally.

Then there is the natural slow process of leavening sourdough breads … yeah, I don’t fully appreciate that slower speed yet. It just don’t happen to speed up sourdough. I thought I had a starter … probably it was slightly underdeveloped but as I was getting down to the wire on time, I went with it. Then I was on the wire and baked it. I should have waited. Still, as is often the case with home made, it’s excellent bread. I’ve just had 4 slices and look forward to toast in the AM and sandwiches for a picnic tomorrow.

Elizabeth is our Kitchen of the Month. And the bread – oh goodness! And the book it’s from, my heart be still. Back in the mists of time, I came across a NYT article by Mark Bitteman featuring a baker named Jim Lahey and a No Knead Bread recipe. The recipe became a blogging hit. It intreged me so without fully reading the recipe as I am still prone to do, I went at it. Unbeknown to each other, Karen (BakeMyDay) had started the same recipe just hours different from me. So we “internet baked” together. My bread came out of the oven about the same time Karen’s did but she was in the Netherlands where it was mid-day … I was in Texas where it was not (it was OH-dark-thirty, middle of the night). The bread was gorgeous, incredible crust AND it’s been the only bread I’ve ever had sing to me! I was underwhelmed by a rather moist crumb but was delighted with the entire experience.

The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook is the first Jim Lahey book I’ve bought … and his writing is as lyrical as my singing bread. This man loves baking bread. The recipes are gorgeous. I don’t believe there is fault in his book or recipes, the fault is my going to fast with the BBB Lariano Style Bread. A few days after I got the book, I baked the Pane Di Lino and Gorn continues to ask when am I going to bake it again. It really was heavenly and I will be baking it again soon.

I followed Elizabeth’s recipe as on her blog … except I cut too many hours at each step. This takes days, really days. But you are never spending more than a few minutes at each step. You do have to keep watch as to when the dough is ready to move on to the next step. Just keep peeking. Have patience.

We would love for you to join in as a buddy baker this month! You don’t have to have a blog to participate, a picture will do. Just send a picture or a link to your post of your finished bread to the host kitchen by the 29th of this month. You will receive a Bread Baking Buddy graphic to keep or add to your post, and be included in our Buddy round up at the end of the month. New recipes are posted every month on the 16th. Check out our Facebook group to see the participants’ baking results during that time.

Tomorrow I have dough in the fridge to bake the Pizza Bianca Alla Romana, Version 1. I think I’ve taken my time with this one, maybe mainly because I was trying to rush getting this bread baked for the Babes.